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Cultural commentary from a Biblical perspectiveFri, 31 Jul 2015 19:09:10 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.3A Christian analysis of critical issuesFor more resources, including articles, The Briefing, Thinking in Public and archived editions of his nationally-syndicated radio show, The Albert Mohler Program, be sure to visit http://www.AlbertMohler.com.R. Albert Mohler, Jr.The Office of Campus Technologywebdesign@sbts.eduJesus, Christ, God, Culture, Bible, Scripture, Truth, Commentary, Radio, Seminary, SBTS, Preachnono“A Lot of People Want Intact Hearts These Days” — Planned Parenthood, Abortion, and the Conscience of a Nationhttp://www.albertmohler.com/2015/07/15/a-lot-of-people-want-intact-hearts-these-days-planned-parenthood-abortion-and-the-conscience-of-a-nation/
http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/07/15/a-lot-of-people-want-intact-hearts-these-days-planned-parenthood-abortion-and-the-conscience-of-a-nation/#commentsWed, 15 Jul 2015 17:41:10 +0000/?p=35257Yesterday’s release of a video showing the senior medical director of Planned Parenthood casually discussing the sale of organs from aborted babies is a moral challenge thrown right in the face of all Americans.

The video reveals Dr. Deborah Nucatola, senior director of medical services for Planned Parenthood, discussing the intentional harvesting of organs and other tissues from babies aborted in Planned Parenthood clinics. While reaching with her fork for salad, Dr. Nucatola openly tells a group she believes to be medical researchers that there is a great demand for fetal livers, but “a lot of people want intact hearts these days.”

Dr. Nucatola went on to explain in chilling detail that abortionists often plan in advance how to harvest desired organs, even telling the group that a “huddle” is sometimes held with clinic staff early in the day, so that targeted organs can be harvested from unborn babies.

Her language is beyond chilling as she described how abortions are conducted specifically to harvest intact organs: “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part. I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.” She also described using an abortion technique that appears to be partial-birth abortion.

The undercover video was released by the Center for Medical Progress, a group with ties to previous efforts to expose Planned Parenthood and the reality of its murderous work. As expected, Planned Parenthood struck back, claiming that the video misrepresented Dr. Nucatola, Planned Parenthood, and the procurement of fetal organs.

In the video, Dr. Nucatola suggests that a cost of $30 to $100 would be a likely range of charges for organs and tissues harvested from aborted babies. She also tells the group that Planned Parenthood does not want to be seen as profiting from the sale of such organs, but she makes clear that this concern is not hampering the harvesting and transfer of the organs.

The sale of human tissues is illegal in the United States, as is the timing or arranging of an abortion if the cause of the abortion is the procurement of organs or tissue. Within hours of the release of the video, Republican presidential candidates and at least two governors were calling for investigations into the involvement of Planned Parenthood in the business of selling fetal organs.

Likewise, the defenders of Planned Parenthood attacked the video and the organization behind it. But Planned Parenthood is clearly concerned about the effect of the video, and it should be. The sight of the senior medical director of Planned Parenthood reaching for salad as she explicitly discusses tearing apart babies in the womb is impossible to reduce to words.

Planned Parenthood called the video “heavily edited, secretly recorded,” and said that it “portrays Planned Parenthood’s participation in tissue donation programs that support lifesaving scientific research.”

The Center for Medical Progress also released over two hours of what it said was unedited video of the conversation. As in the case of previous revelations of wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood, the group goes after the accuser more than the accusations.

But Planned Parenthood is having a hard time keeping its story straight. Eric Ferrero, vice president of communications for the national organization, acknowledged the transfer of fetal organs and tissues, but said that it was all legal and insisted that “there is no financial benefit for tissue donation for either the patient or for Planned Parenthood.” And yet, a public relations firm supporting Planned Parenthood, also put out a release stating that “the transcript indicates that Deborah Nucatola was speculating on the range of reimbursement that patients can receive after stating that they wish to donate any tissues after a procedure.” Well, which is it?

Planned Parenthood stands at the epicenter of the Culture of Death and receives almost half a billion dollars a year in government support. They are not going to be able to explain this video away.

I have no reason to believe that the video is anything less than totally credible. But, even if Planned Parenthood somehow finds a way to evade justice in terms of criminal activity, the part of the video that Planned Parenthood does not –and cannot — deny reveals their senior medical director enjoying a conversation over a meal in which she describes tearing apart the bodies of unborn human beings in order to get the desired organ: “I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”

When the Allied forces liberated the concentration camps of the Nazi regime, General Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the ordinary German citizens of nearby towns and villages to walk through the camps and to see what they had allowed and facilitated. Eisenhower’s point was all too clear — you allowed this to happen, and you share the guilt.

So it is with all Americans. Planned Parenthood and the abortion industrial complex are funded with our tax dollars. Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger, was a racist openly committed to eugenics. Millions of unborn babies have died in its facilities. The group thrives because Americans allow it to thrive.

When this video went viral yesterday, I waited to see how the mainstream media and abortion supporters would respond. That response has, for the most part, been exactly what I expected — defend Planned Parenthood at any cost.

But the video is out there, and it will stay out there. There is no way to un-see it once it is seen.

Writing at Cosmopolitan magazine, abortion supporter Robin Marty said that she had seen the video. Then she said, “Now, frankly, I’m just going to yawn.”

Maybe she will, but if so that will require a massive act of denial. Later in her own essay she stated: “I shuddered when listening to the discussion of how the fetus can be removed, and the idea of a ‘menu’ of fetal tissue and organs that could be procured depending on the gestational age of the pregnancies being terminated and the number of patients who consent to donating is one I hope I never have to encounter again.”

Once again, which is it?

We must pray that this video will mark an important turning point in our nation’s conscience. Images and words can become seared in our minds. The horrifying knowledge of harvested baby hearts must lead to our own broken hearts.

A nation that will allow this, will allow anything.

I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/albertmohler.

]]>http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/07/15/a-lot-of-people-want-intact-hearts-these-days-planned-parenthood-abortion-and-the-conscience-of-a-nation/feed/0Albert MohlerYesterday’s release of a video showing the senior medical director of Planned Parenthood casually discussing the sale of organs from aborted babies is a moral challenge thrown right in the face of all Americans. The video reveals Dr. Deborah Nucatola, senior director of medical services for Planned Parenthood, discussing the intentional harvesting of organs and […]Blog,Everything Has Changed and Nothing Has Changed — The Supreme Court Legalizes Same-Sex Marriagehttp://www.albertmohler.com/2015/06/27/everything-has-changed-and-nothing-has-changed-the-supreme-court-and-same-sex-marriage/
http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/06/27/everything-has-changed-and-nothing-has-changed-the-supreme-court-and-same-sex-marriage/#commentsSat, 27 Jun 2015 04:08:44 +0000/?p=35220Everything has changed and nothing has changed. The Supreme Court’s decision yesterday is a central assault upon marriage as the conjugal union of a man and a woman and in a five to four decision the nation’s highest court has now imposed its mandate redefining marriage on all fifty states.

As Chief Justice Roberts said in his dissent, “The majority’s decision is an act of will, not a legal judgment.”

The majority’s argument, expressed by Justice Kennedy, is that the right of same-sex couples to marry is based in individual autonomy as related to sexuality, in marriage as a fundamental right, in marriage as a privileged context for raising children, and in upholding marriage as central to civilization. But at every one of these points, the majority had to reinvent marriage in order to make its case. The Court has not merely ordered that same-sex couples be allowed to marry – it has fundamentally redefined marriage itself.

The inventive legal argument set forth by the majority is clearly traceable in Justice Kennedy’s previous decisions including Lawrence (2003) and Windsor (2013), and he cites his own decisions as legal precedent. As the Chief Justice makes clear, Justice Kennedy and his fellow justices in the majority wanted to legalize same-sex marriage and they invented a constitutional theory to achieve their purpose. It was indeed an act of will disguised as a legal judgment.

Justice Kennedy declared that “the right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person, and under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment couples of the same-sex cannot be deprived of that right and that liberty.” But marriage is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. As the Chief Justice asserted in his dissent, the majority opinion did not really make any serious constitutional argument at all. It was, as the Chief Justice insisted, an argument based in philosophy rather than in law.

The Supreme Court’s over-reach in this case is more astounding as the decision is reviewed in full, and as the dissenting justices voiced their own urgent concerns. The Chief Justice accused the majority of “judicial policymaking” that endangers our democratic form of government. “The Court today not only overlooks our country’s entire history and tradition but actively repudiates it, preferring to live only in the heady days of the here and now,” he asserted. Further: “Over and over, the majority exalts the role of the judiciary in delivering social change.”

“The majority,” he made clear, “lays out a tantalizing vision for the future for Members of this Court. If an unvarying social institution enduring over all of recorded history cannot inhibit judicial policymaking, what can?”

That is a haunting question. This Chief Justice’s point is an urgent warning: If the Supreme Court will arrogate to itself the right to redefine marriage, there is no restraint on the judiciary whatsoever.

Justice Antonin Scalia offered a stinging rebuke to the majority. “This is a naked judicial claim to legislative–indeed super-legislative–power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government,” he stated. Justice Scalia then offered these stunning words of judgment: “A system of government that makes the people subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy.”

The Chief Justice also pointed to another very telling aspect of the majority opinion. The Kennedy opinion opens wide a door that basically invites looming demands for the legalization of polygamy and polyamory. As Chief Justice Roberts observed: “It is striking how much of the majority’s reasoning would apply with equal force to the claim of a fundamental right to plural marriage.” Striking, indeed. What is perhaps even more striking is that the majority did not even appear concerned about the extension of its logic to polygamy.

As the decision approached, those of us who have warned that the redefinition of marriage will not stop with same-sex unions were told that we were offering a fallacious slippery-slope argument. Now, the Chief Justice of the United States verifies that these concerns were fully valid. You can count on the fact that advocates for legalized polygamy found great encouragement in this decision.

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the land, and its decisions cannot be appealed to a higher court of law. But the Supreme Court, like every human institution and individual, will eventually face two higher courts. The first is the court of history, which will render a judgment that I believe will embarrass this court and reveal its dangerous trajectory. The precedents and arguments set forth in this decision cannot be limited to the right of same-sex couples to marry. If individual autonomy and equal protection mean that same-sex couples cannot be denied what is now defined as a fundamental right of marriage, then others will arrive to make the same argument. This Court will find itself in a trap of its own making, and one that will bring great harm to this nation and its families. The second court we all must face is the court of divine judgment. For centuries, marriage ceremonies in the English-speaking world have included the admonition that what God has put together, no human being – or human court – should tear asunder. That is exactly what the Supreme Court of the United States has now done.

The threat to religious liberty represented by this decision is clear, present, and inevitable. Assurances to the contrary, the majority in this decision has placed every religious institution in legal jeopardy if that institution intends to uphold its theological convictions limiting marriage to the union of a man and a woman. This threat is extended to every religious citizen or congregation that would uphold the convictions held by believers for millennia. Justice Clarence Thomas warned in his dissent of “ruinous consequences for religious liberty.”

One of the most dangerous dimensions of this decision is evident in what can only be described as the majority’s vilification of those who hold to a traditional view of marriage as exclusively the union of a man and a woman. Justice Samuel Alito stated bluntly that the decision “will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy.” According to the argument offered by the majority, any opposition to same-sex marriage is rooted in moral animus against homosexuals. In offering this argument the majority slanders any defender of traditional marriage and openly rejects and vilifies those who, on the grounds of theological conviction, cannot affirm same-sex marriage.

In a very real sense, everything has now changed. The highest court of the land has redefined marriage. Those who cannot accept this redefinition of marriage as a matter of morality and ultimate truth, must acknowledge that the laws of this nation concerning marriage will indeed be defined against our will. We must acknowledge the authority of the Supreme Court in matters of law. Christians must be committed to be good citizens and good neighbors, even as we cannot accept this redefinition of marriage in our churches and in our lives.

We must contend for marriage as God’s gift to humanity – a gift central and essential to human flourishing and a gift that is limited to the conjugal union of a man and a woman. We must contend for religious liberty for all, and focus our energies on protecting the rights of Christian citizens and Christian institutions to teach and operate on the basis of Christian conviction.

We cannot be silent, and we cannot join the moral revolution that stands in direct opposition to what we believe the Creator has designed, given, and intended for us. We cannot be silent, and we cannot fail to contend for marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

In one sense, everything has changed. And yet, nothing has changed. The cultural and legal landscape has changed, as we believe this will lead to very real harms to our neighbors. But our Christian responsibility has not changed. We are charged to uphold marriage as the union of a man and a woman and to speak the truth in love. We are also commanded to uphold the truth about marriage in our own lives, in our own marriages, in our own families, and in our own churches.

We are called to be the people of the truth, even when the truth is not popular and even when the truth is denied by the culture around us.Christians have found themselves in this position before, and we will again. God’s truth has not changed. The Holy Scriptures have not changed. The Gospel of Jesus Christ has not changed. The church’s mission has not changed. Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.

I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/albertmohler.

]]>http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/06/27/everything-has-changed-and-nothing-has-changed-the-supreme-court-and-same-sex-marriage/feed/0Albert MohlerEverything has changed and nothing has changed. The Supreme Court’s decision yesterday is a central assault upon marriage as the conjugal union of a man and a woman and in a five to four decision the nation’s highest court has now imposed its mandate redefining marriage on all fifty states. As Chief Justice Roberts said in […]Blog,Same-Sex Marriage,Supreme CourtThe Heresy of Racial Superiority — Confronting the Past, and Confronting the Truthhttp://www.albertmohler.com/2015/06/23/the-heresy-of-racial-superiority-confronting-the-past-and-confronting-the-truth/
http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/06/23/the-heresy-of-racial-superiority-confronting-the-past-and-confronting-the-truth/#commentsTue, 23 Jun 2015 04:55:02 +0000/?p=35160Among Christians, the word heresy must be used with care and precision. Not every doctrinal error is a heresy, though all doctrinal error is to be avoided. A heresy is the denial or corruption of a Christian doctrine that is central to the faith and essential to the gospel. The late theologian Harold O. J. Brown defined heresy as a doctrinal error “so important that those who believe it, who the church calls heretics, must be considered to have abandoned the faith.”

That sets the issue clearly. Premillennialists consider postmillennialists to be in error, but they do not consider postmillennialists to be heretics. Those who deny the Trinity, on the other hand, are heretics, and the believing church must consider non-trinitarians to have departed the faith. The same must be said of those who deny the full deity and humanity of Jesus Christ. Far more can be said about heresy, but the word must be used with care and accuracy.

Protestants, rightly standing with the Reformers, have insisted that justification by faith alone is also central to the gospel of Christ and essential to any proclamation of that gospel. Martin Luther, for example, considered justification to be articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae — the article by which the church stands or falls, and so it is.

Today, we just recognize and condemn another heresy that has reared its ugly head in recent days, and murderously so. The killing of nine worshippers gathered at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina is a hideous demonstration of the deadly power of this heresy. The young white man charged with the killings has not, as yet, claimed a theological rationale for his acts. Nevertheless, he has been exposed as a young man whose worldview was savagely warped by the ideology of racial superiority — white superiority — and the grotesque and wretched ideology that drove him is now inseparable from the murders he is charged with committing.

If the reach of that ideology could be limited to a few fringe figures, we could allow ourselves to be less concerned. But the ideology that was represented in Dylann Roof’s reported words as he killed and in the photographs and evidence found on his Internet postings is not limited to a small fringe. You do not have to hang a flag representing the apartheid governments of Rhodesia or South Africa to be a racist.

The ideology of racial superiority is one of the saddest and most sordid evidences of the Fall and its horrifying effects. Throughout history, racial ideologies have been driving forces of war, of social cohesion, of demagoguery, and of dictatorships. Race theory was central to the Nazi regime and was used by both sides in the Pacific theater of World War II. In that theater of the war, both the Japanese and the Americans claimed that the other was an inferior race that must be defeated by force. The Japanese claimed racial superiority as central to their subjugation of other Asian peoples.

At the same time, many white Americans claimed and assumed the superiority of caucasian skin to black and brown skin — or any other color of skin. The main “color line,” as Frederick Douglass called it in 1881, has always been black and white in America. While this is a national problem, and theories of racial superiority have been popular in both the North and the South, it was the states of the old Confederacy that gave those ideologies their most fertile soil. White superiority was claimed as a belief by both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, but it was the Confederacy that made racial superiority a central purpose.

More humbling still is the fact that many churches, churchmen, and theologians gave sanction to that ideology of racial superiority. While this was true throughout the southern churches, Southern Baptists bear a particular responsibility and burden of history. The Southern Baptist Convention was not only founded by slaveholders; it was founded by men who held to an ideology of racial superiority and who bathed that ideology in scandalous theological argument. At times, white superiority was defended by a putrid exegesis of the Bible that claimed a “curse of Ham” as the explanation of dark skin — an argument that reflects such ignorance of Scripture and such shameful exegesis that it could only be believed by those who were looking for an argument to satisfy their prejudices.

We bear the burden of that history to this day. Racial superiority is a sin as old as Genesis and as contemporary as the killings in Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. The ideology of racial superiority is not only sinful, it is deadly.

I gladly stand with the founders of the Southern Baptist Convention and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in their courageous affirmation of biblical orthodoxy, Baptist beliefs, and missionary zeal. There would be no Southern Baptist Convention and there would be no Southern Seminary without them. James P. Boyce and Basil Manly, Jr. and John A. Broadus were titans of the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

But there is more to the story. Boyce and Broadus were chaplains in the Confederate army. The founders of the SBC and of Southern Seminary were racist defenders of slavery. Just a few months ago I was reading a history of Greenville, South Carolina when I came across a racist statement made by James P. Boyce, my ultimate predecessor as president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. It was so striking that I had to find a chair. This, too, is our story.

By every reckoning, Boyce and Broadus were consummate Christian gentlemen, given the culture of their day. They would have been horrified, I am certain, by any act of violence against any person. But any strain of racial superiority, and especially any strain bathed in the language of Christian theology, is deadly dangerous all the same.

In 1995, on the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Southern Baptist Convention, the denomination publicly repented of its roots in the defense of slavery. In 2015, far more is required of us. It is not enough to repent of slavery. We must repent and seek to confront and remove every strain of racial superiority that remains and seek with all our strength to be the kind of churches of which Jesus would be proud — the kind of churches that will look like the marriage supper of the Lamb.

I am certain that I do not know all that this will require of us. I intend to keep those names on our buildings and to stand without apology with the founders and their affirmation of Baptist orthodoxy. But those names on our buildings and college and professorial chairs and endowed scholarships do not represent unmixed pride. They also represent the burden of history and the urgency of repentance. We the living cannot repent on behalf of those who are dead, but we can repent for the legacy that we would otherwise perpetuate and extend by silence.

I will not remove those names from the buildings, but I bear the burden of telling the whole story and acknowledging the totality of the legacy. I bear responsibility to set things right in so far as I have the opportunity to set them right. I am so thankful that the racist ideologies of the past would rightly horrify the faculty and students of the present. Are we yet horrified enough?

I will not remove those names from the buildings, but I could never fly the flag that represented their cause in battle. I know full well that today’s defenders of that flag — by far most of them — do not intend to send a racial message nor to defy civil rights. But some do, and there is no way to escape the symbolism that so wounds our neighbors — and our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Today, most who defend that flag do so to claim a patrimony and to express love for a region. But that is not the whole story, and we know it.

And now the hardest part. Were the founders of the Southern Baptist Convention and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary heretics?

They defended all the doctrines they believed were central and essential to the Christian faith as revealed in the Bible and as affirmed throughout the history of the church. They sought to defend Baptist orthodoxy in an age already tiring of orthodoxy. They would never have imagined themselves as heretics, and in one sense they certainly were not. Nor, we should add, was Martin Luther a heretic, even as he expressed a horrifying anti-semitism.

But I would argue that racial superiority in any form, and white superiority as the central issue of our concern, is a heresy. The separation of human beings into ranks of superiority and inferiority differentiated by skin color is a direct assault upon the doctrine of Creation and an insult to the imago Dei — the image of God in which every human being is made. Racial superiority is also directly subversive of the gospel of Christ, effectively reducing the power of his substitutionary atonement and undermining the faithful preaching of the gospel to all persons and to all nations.

To put the matter plainly, one cannot simultaneously hold to an ideology of racial superiority and rightly present the gospel of Jesus Christ. One cannot hold to racial superiority and simultaneously defend the faith once for all delivered to the saints. So far as I can tell, no one ever confronted the founders of the Southern Baptist Convention and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary with the brutal reality of what they were doing, believing, and teaching in this regard. The same seems to be true in the case of Martin Luther and his anti-semitism. For that matter, how recently were these sins recognized as sins and repented of? The problem is not limited to the names of the founders on our buildings.

I do believe that racial superiority is a heresy. That means that those who hold it unrepentantly and refuse correction by Scripture and the gospel of Christ must, as Harold O. J. Brown rightly said, “be considered to have abandoned the faith.”

We cannot change the past, but we must learn from it. There is no way to confront the dead with their heresies, but there is no way to avoid the reckoning that we must make, and the repentance that must be our own.

By God’s grace, this is the best I know to say. By God’s grace, may I not die with heresies unknown to me, but all too known to my children, and to my children’s children.

I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/albertmohler.

I was asked by Religion News Service for a comment on the Confederate Battle Flag issue yesterday. This was my statement in full:

“Symbols matter, and sometimes they matter in different ways to different people. For most people in the South, the Confederate Battle Flag does not now represent racism or any reference to rebellion against the Union. Nevertheless, every symbol has a historical context and associations. For this specific flag, the most immediate context is the civil rights movement and resistance to its central goals. As Christians, we are called to love God and to love our neighbors. Some of our neighbors–and some of our own brothers and sisters in Christ–are deeply wounded by this flag. They see it as a denial of their essential humanity and as a statement of racial superiority. For that sufficient reason, gospel-minded Christians should support taking down the flag. Love of neighbor outweighs even love of region, and it certainly requires that we disassociate ourselves from any hint of racism, now or in the past.”

News articles drawing from that statement have now appeared in The Washington Post and other major media, but that is the full statement.

]]>http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/06/23/the-heresy-of-racial-superiority-confronting-the-past-and-confronting-the-truth/feed/0Albert MohlerAmong Christians, the word heresy must be used with care and precision. Not every doctrinal error is a heresy, though all doctrinal error is to be avoided. A heresy is the denial or corruption of a Christian doctrine that is central to the faith and essential to the gospel. The late theologian Harold O. J. […]Blog,Which Way, Evangelicals? There is Nowhere to Hidehttp://www.albertmohler.com/2015/06/10/which-way-evangelicals-there-is-nowhere-to-hide/
http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/06/10/which-way-evangelicals-there-is-nowhere-to-hide/#commentsWed, 10 Jun 2015 05:46:20 +0000/?p=35063The very first issue of Christianity Today is dated October 15, 1956. In his first editorial, Carl F. H. Henry set his course for the magazine: “Those who direct the editorial policy of Christianity Today unreservedly accept the complete reliability and authority of the written Word of God. It is their conviction that the Scriptures teach the doctrine of plenary inspiration.”

Henry also affirmed continuity with the great orthodox tradition of biblical doctrine and moral principles: “The doctrinal content of historic Christianity will be presented and defended. Among the distinctive doctrines to be stressed are those of God, Christ, man, salvation, and the last things. The best modern scholarship recognizes the bearing of doctrine on moral and spiritual life.”

In that same issue, Billy Graham stressed the authority of the Bible in evangelism. “I use the phrase ‘The Bible says’ because the Word of God is the authoritative basis of our faith,” Graham said. “I do not continually distinguish between the authority of God and the authority of the Bible because I am confident that he has made his will known authoritatively in the Scriptures.”

That first issue of Christianity Today registered significant concerns about the trajectory of Christianity in America. Secularism was already the prevailing worldview in some elite circles of the culture, and those who founded Christianity Today did so, in large part, to establish a conservative counter-voice to the liberal magazine, the Christian Century.

Christianity Today has exerted a significant influence among American evangelicals since that first issue was published. But, as University of California at Berkeley historian David Hollinger has noted, “the fact remains that the public life of the United States moved farther in the directions advocated in 1960 by the Christian Century than in the directions then advocated by Christianity Today.”

If anything, that is an understatement.

Suffice it to say that the founders of Christianity Today did not have the legalization of same-sex marriage on their radar. They did not even have a vocabulary that would define it.

Tony Campolo’s announcement this week that he is “finally ready to call for the full acceptance of Christian gay couples into the Church” hardly registered as a thunderclap. Campolo, long proudly identified with the evangelical Left, acknowledged in his statement that his previous answer to the question “has always been somewhat ambiguous.” Nevertheless, Campolo’s direction was clear. His wife and the organization he leads have both called for the legalization of same-sex marriage, and Campolo’s announcement came as no surprise to anyone who had followed his statements in recent years.

It was not always so. Back in 1999 Campolo told students at Calvin College, “I believe the first chapter of Romans is where I rest my case, and that is that the Bible does not allow for same-sex marriages and same-sex eroticism.” Similarly, he told Sojourners magazine that same year: “I believe that the Bible does not allow for same-gender sexual intercourse or marriage.” Romans 1:26-27, he said, “makes it clear that any homosexual activity is contrary to what the Bible allows.”

Campolo’s departure from this biblical clarity was dismissed in his statement this week by his remark that “people of good will can and do read the Bible very differently when it comes to controversial issues.” In this case, the Tony Campolo of 2015 reads the Bible differently than the Tony Campolo of 1999.

The real news of recent days, prompted by Campolo’s comments, was the statement made by David Neff, who was on the staff of Christianity Today from 1986 until his retirement in 2013, serving for some of those years as the magazine’s editor in chief. On social media Neff expressed his agreement with Campolo. Explaining his own position on the issue, Neff said: “I think the ethically responsible thing for gay and lesbian Christians to do is to form lasting, covenanted partnerships. I also believe that the church should help them in those partnerships in the same way the church should fortify traditional marriages.”

Now, that is a thunderclap – not so much because David Neff made that statement, but because David Neff was once editor-in-chief of Christianity Today.

Responding only hours after Neff made his statement, current editor-in-chief Mark Galli issued an editorial on behalf of the magazine in which he registered surprise and disappointment at Neff’s newly declared position. “At CT, we’re saddened that David has come to this conclusion,” Galli wrote. “Saddened because we firmly believe that the Bible teaches that God intends the most intimate of covenant relationships to be enjoyed exclusively by a man and a woman.”

Galli also made the case that the vast majority of Christians around the world — 2 billion by his estimate — stand with 2,000 years of unbroken Christian witness of that definition of marriage. That view, Galli wrote, is “a consistent, nuanced, and, we believe, biblical working out of a theology of sexuality.”

Galli added: “We at CT are sorry when fellow evangelicals modify their views to accord with the current secular understanding on this matter. We’ll continue to be sorry, because over the next many years, there will be many who will similarly reverse themselves on sexual ethics.”

Those statements, drawn from the editorial, are clear, convictional, and timely. Galli put Christianity Today on the record as opposed to same-sex marriage and to the affirmation of same-sex relationships in the church.

But then, in a very curious paragraph, Galli stated:

“We’ll be sad, but we won’t panic or despair. Neither will we feel compelled to condemn the converts and distance ourselves from them. But, to be sure, they will be enlisting in a cause that we believe is ultimately destructive to society, to the church, and to relations between men and women.”

I have to admit that I do not understand how those two sentences can be combined. If the view of the “converts” to same-sex marriage and the acceptance of homosexual partnerships is “ultimately destructive to society, to the church, and to relations between men and women,” how can that distance be avoided?

The reality is that it cannot. This is a moment of decision, and every evangelical believer, congregation, denomination, and institution will have to answer. There will be no place to hide. The forces driving this revolution in morality will not allow evasion or equivocation. Every pastor, every church, and every Christian organization will soon be forced to declare an allegiance to the Scriptures and to the Bible’s teachings on marriage and sexual morality, or to affirm loyalty to the sexual revolution. That revolution did not start with same-sex marriage, and it will not end there. But marriage is the most urgent issue of the day, and the moment of decision has arrived.

In this season of testing, Christians committed to the gospel of Christ are called upon to muster the greatest display of compassion and conviction of our lives. But true compassion will never lead to an abandonment of biblical authority or a redefinition of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I was contacted yesterday by Sarah Pulliam Bailey of The Washington Post. She asked about these very developments. As I told her, this issue will eventually break relationships — personally, congregationally, and institutionally. This is the sad reality and there is simply no way around it. No one, especially in a position of leadership, will be able to fly under the radar on this issue.

The last two days have been very revealing. The present moment is very demanding. The issues before us are compelling and urgent. The Bible is clear. Are you ready to give an answer?

I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/albertmohler.

]]>http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/06/10/which-way-evangelicals-there-is-nowhere-to-hide/feed/0Albert MohlerThe very first issue of Christianity Today is dated October 15, 1956. In his first editorial, Carl F. H. Henry set his course for the magazine: “Those who direct the editorial policy of Christianity Today unreservedly accept the complete reliability and authority of the written Word of God. It is their conviction that the Scriptures […]Blog,For Summertime or Anytime: A Summer Reading List for 2015http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/06/02/for-summertime-or-anytime-a-summer-reading-list-for-2015/
http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/06/02/for-summertime-or-anytime-a-summer-reading-list-for-2015/#commentsTue, 02 Jun 2015 05:15:35 +0000/?p=34947Do we read by seasons? To some degree, we probably do. Summer promises the opportunity to pack a stack of books that otherwise might not fit in the schedule. Every serious reader needs to read some books just for the sheer thrill of reading. A good book brings more than pleasure, of course, but pleasure in reading is not to be taken lightly. In this list I suggest some new and current books that brought me pleasure and satisfaction as I read them, and as I now share them with others. The list is heavily weighted to history and historical biography. No apologies there — these are the books I recommend this season for summer reading. Each earned its way on this list. By the end of the summer, perhaps you will have your own list to share as well.1. Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania (New York: Crown Publishers).

The list of authors whose non-fiction books make their way to almost every best-seller list is short, but Erik Larson is surely found among them. Larson has written a series of best-sellers, including In the Garden of Beasts and The Devil in the White City. Each is well researched and incredibly well told. Dead Wake is no exception. Larson tells the story of one of the greatest maritime disasters of all time — the sinking of a great ocean liner by a German U-boat. The sinking of the Lusitania is a great human tragedy, and it is tied to the story of a world at war, and of the United States finding its way in a dangerous modern world. Characters include the captains of both vessels and President Woodrow Wilson, along with a host of others. Readers will be gripped by an important story that is incredibly well told. Larson brings the story to life in the centennial year of the attack and sinking. Once you begin, don’t plan to put this book down for long.

Excerpt:

Schweiger recorded the encounter at 12:15 p.m. Half an hour later. he surfaced and returned to his westward course, to continue his voyage home. Conservation of fuel was now a priority. He could not delay–the journey back to Emden would take another week. By now the weather had cleared to a degree that was almost startling. “Unusually good visibility,” Schweiger noted; “very beautiful weather.” On the horizon, something new caught his eye.

Imagine a young boy, just five years old, standing on the gallows waiting to be executed in retribution toward his father, who had abandoned him to his fate. The boy was so young that he did not understand what he was facing, and he seemed to be fascinated with the weaponry of his executioner. Escaping the gallows, perhaps because his father’s powerful enemies could not bring themselves to execute a boy so young, William Marshal grew to become one of the greatest knights of medieval history — a powerful figure of war and authority to whom five English kings would, to a considerable degree, owe their thrones. William Marshal’s story is well told by Thomas Asbridge, who takes his readers into the tumult and tenor of the medieval world. This is a world so distant from our own, but perhaps not so distant as some might think.

Excerpt:

There is no way of knowing whether the actual experience of being a hostage and facing the threat of death–or, perhaps, more importantly, his subsequent recollection upon these events–left any enduring psychological marks. Perhaps the repeated telling of the tale represented some kind of defense mechanism or coping device, but William may equally have judged his father’s actions, and his own predicament, as a natural consequence of medieval war. It is notable, however, that in later years William never placed his own kin, nor even his knights and retainers, in such a position of forsaken peril.

The Ottoman Empire was once the most powerful in the world–and one of the most lasting. Its demise would come only in the conflagration of the Great War. The story of the fall of the great Islamic empire, one of the most complex and fascinating in world history, was one of the most significant and lasting effects of World War I, and we now know that it set the stage for the world as we know it today. Eugene Rogan traces the history of the Ottomans but his particular focus and skill comes as he tells the story of how the Ottoman Empire sided with the the Central Powers and met disaster. In telling the story he also explains how the Middle East as we know it today came to be. Today’s headlines–and urgent world concerns–make much more sense after reading this important work. The Fall of the Ottoman Empire is a captivating tale, filled with sultans, pashas, viziers, and generals, told by a skilled historian and writer.

Excerpt:

The Ottomans has lost the great War. It was a national catastrophe but not unprecedented. Since 1699, the Ottomans had lost most of the wars they had fought, and still the empire had survived. Yet never had the Ottomans faced such a constellation of interests as they did in negotiating the peace after the great War. Caught between the conflicting demands of the victorious powers and Turkish nationalists, the Ottomans ultimately fell more as a result of the terms of the peace than of the magnitude of their defeat.

Do we need yet another major work on George Washington? The short answer to that question is an emphatic yes. Washington was larger than life to his contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic, and he remains one of history’s most fascinating figures. The great achievement of Robert Middlekauff is the way he tells the story of Washington and the American Revolution in a way that combines the best skills of a biographer with the critical insights of an historian. Middlekauff brings Washington to life to a degree that very few modern authors have achieved, and readers who think they know George Washington very well will soon discover that there is far more to know, and every bit worth knowing. Middlekauff leaves Washington where he thought he would be left, with the Revolution secured–at least tenuously, and Washington free to return to his beloved Mount Vernon. He was not to remain in a quiet life of farming for long, of course, and we can only hope that Middlekauff will follow Washington’s Revolution with the rest of the story.

Excerpt:

All the time that he served as commander of the Continental Army, he was in fact also the leader of the Revolution. His unspoken and undefined responsibilities in this role transcended those of his assignment as commander in chief, and he became, as the war developed, a symbol of the freedom the young republic embodied. He was the political leader of the Revolution, though he drafted no legislation and signed no laws. But if he failed, it was widely understood, the Revolution failed.

Sometimes a book appears and the reader simply has to ask why this book had not been written before. There are histories aplenty of the revolution that toppled the Stuart monarchy in England and took King Charles I to the scaffold. And yet, no one has really told the story of that revolution and regicide and then followed the story to the restoration of the Stuarts after the fall of the Protectorate and then to the absolute determination of King Charles II, son of the beheaded king, to track down the regicides and bring them to his violent judgment. In any event, no one has told the story so compellingly as Charles Spenser has done in Killers of the King. This is as interesting a book of history as any reader is likely to enjoy, and Spencer takes his reader right into the debates of that tumultuous age, when life and death would hang in the balance for a king and then for his killers. This was a violent age that set the course of British history and would, eventually, touch both sides of the Atlantic.

Excerpt:

Charles consistently overestimated the strength of his hand and the patience of his enemies, as he played Parliament, the army and the Scots off one another. He felt sure that none of these competing forces could achieve what they wanted without his support. At the same time, he felt no qualms of conscience about his many deceits: all was being extracted from him under duress, while he was in effect a prisoner. The king believed this negated his concessions: he fully intended to go back on any promises made, once his freedom was restored. He wrote as much, repeatedly, in letters he intended for sympathisers on the mainland. Many were intercepted. As the conditions of his confinement became stricter, it began to dawn on Charles that Governor Hammond was not his protector, but his gaoler, and that he was under house arrest.

Recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, twice awarded with the Pulitzer Prize, David McCullough is an institution of sorts and a legend in his own time. Few writers of history achieve his stature, and McCullough’s ability to make an epoch or an individual come alive is truly remarkable. In that sense, we should be particularly glad that McCullough has written The Wright Brothers. The world as we know it would not exist without manned flight, and the Wrights are central to that story. Nevertheless, the Wright brothers seem, if we are honest, less interesting than their invention. McCullough’s achievement in this book is to make Wilbur and Orville Wright more interesting than most histories of flight and most biographers have yet revealed. Many people will read this book simply because David McCullough has written it. Fair enough. McCullough could, we imagine, make any subject interesting. But in The Wright Brothers McCullough makes us want to know even more about these determined brothers as he tells the truly compelling story of the birth of the flying machines that make the modern world possible.

Excerpt:

Success it most certainly was. And more. What had transpired that day in 1903, in the stiff winds of the Outer Banks in less than two hours time, was one of the turning points in history, the beginning of change for the world far greater than any of those present could possibly have imagined. With their homemade machine, Wilbur and Orville Wright had shown without a doubt than man could fly and if the world did not yet know it, they did…. As they crated up the damaged Flyer to ship home, the brothers were “absolutely sure” in their own minds that they had mastered the problem of mechanical flying. But they also understood as no one else could know how many improvements were needed, how much more they themselves needed to learn about flying so different a machine, and that this would come only with a great deal more experience. The Flyer would go into storage in Dayton. It would never be flown again.

World War II remains a focus of intense historical interest, and it became so even before it was over and victory in both Europe and the Pacific had been secured. The uncovering of crucial intelligence information in recent years has led to the confirmation that the Duke of Windsor, the former King Edward VIII, was, at the very least, working against the interests of his own nation and its allies before and even during the war. Many of the books about the relationship between King George VI, father of the reigning monarch, and Edward VIII, the abdicated king he followed to the throne, have been sensationalistic and lacking in substance. Princes at War is the most substantial telling of the story to appear after the release of the intelligence data on the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and the book takes the reader into some of the most dangerous days of the twentieth century. The book is a study in character, told through the lives of the characters who sat on the throne of Britain at a time when it really mattered.

Excerpt:

Adolf Hitler and his Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, savored the prospect of a tour of Nazi Germany by Britain’s ex-king. Of all the pieces moving swiftly across the chessboard of European diplomacy, the former king turning up in the heart of Berlin was an unexpected bonus. Hitler had known of the duke’s pro-German views for some years, not least through the duke’s own relatives. A German grandson of Queen Victoria, Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg, a member of the Nazi party and the Brownshirts, had agreed to spy for Hitler as early as 1936. Mingling unobtrusively with the royal family when they mourned the death of George V at Sandringham, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg had extracted from the untried new king, Edward VIII, much useful information for the Fuhrer.

We take our view of the world for granted. It just makes sense to us to imagine the globe with polar ice at both the North and South Poles. But that view of Earth, so fixed in our minds now, is barely a hundred years old. In the late nineteenth century, some of the brightest minds of the day sincerely believed that a warm ocean of navigable waters was to be found at the North Pole. Major maritime nations were in a race to reach this sea and to claim its riches. Add to this the fact that any number of adventurers and explorers were ready to risk their lives and the lives of others to reach the North Pole, in particular, and to find glory in their exploits. In the Kingdom of Ice tells the story of the tragic but heroic voyage of the U.S.S. Jeanette and her captain, George Washington De Long. Hampton Sides narrates the story very well, and explains why “Arctic Fever” was so contagious in the great Age of Exploration. Readers will never again look at the globe and see that polar mass of ice without remembering this story.

Excerpt:

De Long was even starting to doubt the cherished concept of the Open Polar Sea. The implacable ice did not appear to be a mere “girdle,” or an “annulus,” that one could simply bust through. It seemed to stretch out forever, and the pressures locked up within the pack suggested unimaginably huge expanses of even thicker ice. “Is this always a dead sea?,” he wondered. “Does the ice never find an outlet? Surely it must go somewhere. I should not be surprised of the ocean had frozen over down to the equator. I believe this icy waste will go on surging to and fro until the last trump blows….” The Jeanette expedition had begun to shed its organizing ideas, in all their unfounded romance, and to replace them with a reckoning of the way the Arctic truly was. This, in turn, led De Long to the gradual understanding that an endlessly more perilous voyage lay ahead. They might reach the North Pole, but almost certainly they were not going to sail there.

This work of dual biography tells the stories of two of the most titanic figures of American history. William C. Davis turns to the drama and depth of the Civil War to illuminate our understanding of the war’s two most significant generals, Grant and Lee, and, through them, to reshape our understanding of the war they fought and the nation they shaped. The American Civil War represents a battlefield of history and argument, and Grant and Lee are often considered as a focus of argument or iconic symbol. Both were real men, with real lives, real passions, and real beliefs, and they shared the unspeakably brutal reality of real war. Both continue to shape the American experience, and this book’s great value is in considering Grant and Lee together. The pathos of their stories, inextricably linked, will come through to every reader. This is not merely their story, but ours as well.

Excerpt:

Grant and Lee were not men of big ideas. They reflected little, if at all, on man and his place in the universe, the nature of democracy, or freedom, or liberty. They were two one-time Whigs turned quasi-Democrats, at least in spirit, with one of them now drifting in the crisis back toward the Republicans. Competing loyalties drove Lee, yet he always knew that there was only one way for him to turn in the end. Even as he felt himself nearing the close of a career he regarded as largely unsuccessful, now he looked ahead to a service he dreaded but could not refuse, in a cause he deplored, and which he feared might only cap his professional failure with personal and regional ruin. He was not a happy man and had not been for some years. He saw nothing ahead but questions for himself and his people, all at risk of being answered disastrously. For his part, Grant knew the face of failure intimately, but was finally achieving at least a kind of basic security and domestic stability he had not known before. He may not have been prosperous, but he was happy. The crisis brought no tugs on his loyalties. From the moment of the firing on Fort Sumter he saw through all secondary matters, like family or party alliances, that there was only one question and only one answer, and his was the Union at any cost. Each man embraced instinctive feelings about what it meant to be an American and what his country ought to be. Within a matter of hours in the bloom of springtime, each committed himself to war to try to give those feelings life.

Most Americans know that the nation was born at the cost of a revolution. Fewer know that the revolution did not produce the form of government that emerged, years later, in the form of the Constitution of the United States. Ellis rightly refers to the emergence of our constitutional order as the “Second American Revolution.” Author of an important book on the revolutionary generation, Founding Brothers, Ellis reminds us of the incredible achievement that the Constitution was — and is — and of the compelling story of how that achievement came to be. The Revolution won independence for the colonies. The “Second American Revolution” won a nation and a constitutional republic. Against the “progressive” school of American history, popular for over a half-century, Ellis argues that the motivating concerns of the constitutional framers were political and not merely economic. This is refreshing. He argues convincingly that four men were most responsible for this second revolution and its success — George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. Even readers who will disagree with some points of Ellis’s constitutional interpretation (I did) will agree, appreciatively, that he has told the story very well.

Excerpt:

My argument is that four men made the transition from confederacy to nation happen. They are George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. If they are the stars of the story, the supporting cast consists of Robert Morris, Gouverneur Morris (no relation), and Thomas Jefferson. Readers can and should decide for themselves, but my contention is that the political quartet diagnosed the systemic dysfunctions under the Articles, manipulated the political process to force a calling of the Constitutional Convention, collaborated to set the agenda in Philadelphia, attempted somewhat successfully to orchestrate the debates in the state ratifying conventions, then drafted the Bill of Rights as an insurance policy to ensure state compliance with the constitutional settlement. If I am right, this was arguably the most creative and consequential act of political leadership in American history.

Reading is an individual act that, at its best, overflows into our relationships, conversations, and generous sharing. Good books make us think as we read and reflect. The best books make us think deeply, without the overwhelming sense that thinking is what we are doing. Enjoy reading worthy books, summertime or anytime.

I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/albertmohler.

]]>http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/06/02/for-summertime-or-anytime-a-summer-reading-list-for-2015/feed/0Albert MohlerDo we read by seasons? To some degree, we probably do. Summer promises the opportunity to pack a stack of books that otherwise might not fit in the schedule. Every serious reader needs to read some books just for the sheer thrill of reading. A good book brings more than pleasure, of course, but pleasure […]Blog,Books,Summer ReadingA Requiem for the Boy Scoutshttp://www.albertmohler.com/2015/05/27/a-requiem-for-the-boy-scouts/
http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/05/27/a-requiem-for-the-boy-scouts/#commentsWed, 27 May 2015 05:16:23 +0000/?p=34897The Boy Scouts were doomed the moment the national leadership decided to preserve the organization at the cost of the values and ideals that gave it birth. Speaking to a national meeting of Boy Scouts of America leaders, President Robert Gates, former Secretary of Defense and former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, called for the B.S.A. to abandon its policy of allowing the participation of openly gay scouts, but not the involvement of openly-gay adults.

Speaking in Atlanta, Secretary Gates told his fellow B.S.A. leaders that “we must deal with the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be.” Gates presented a matter-of-fact briefing to the leaders, speaking in entirely pragmatic terms. There was not a shred of moral insight or argument in his statement, other than his belief that the Scouts must do whatever is necessary, or face “the end of us as a national movement.”

Even as he took office last year, Gates indicated that he was not satisfied with the compromise the B.S.A. national board adopted in 2013. After insisting, just six months earlier, that the Scouts would not change their policy excluding openly-gay scouts and scouting leaders — a policy national leaders acknowledged was expected by the vast majority of scout parents — the national board crumbled under external pressure, largely from activist organizations and major corporations.

By any honest account, the policy adopted in 2013 was a compromise that anyone could see would not hold. By allowing for openly-gay scouts but not openly-gay adult leaders, the B.S.A. put itself in a no-man’s land of moral evasion. As recently as 2004 the Boy Scouts of America had maintained that homosexual conduct is “inconsistent” with the Scout Oath’s requirement that a scout be “morally straight.” By 2013 that policy — successfully defended all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States — was an embarrassment to some leaders and in some regions of the country.

But the 2013 policy was stranded in moral ambiguity. If there is nothing morally deficient with homosexuality, why allow gay scouts but not gay leaders? Furthermore, about 70 percent of all local scouting units are sponsored by religious organizations, who found themselves in the position of choosing between remaining loyal to the scouting organization or committed to their own religious convictions. Some decided to wait it out.

Predictably, the waiting is soon to be over. Gates indicated to the press that a decision is likely by October. The handwriting is on the tent wall, and the direction is set. The compromised policy of 2013 is about to be abandoned, with scouting at all levels, including adult leaders, to be open regardless of sexual orientation.

Back in 2013, those who demanded the full inclusion of gay scouts and leaders registered their dissatisfaction with the new policy. The editorial board of The New York Times called the new policy “an unprincipled position” — and they were right. As the editors pushed onward, they warned that the move “should hardly satisfy” the demand for full inclusion. Once again, they were clearly right. Both sides could see the the compromise of 2013 was unprincipled and unsustainable.

Now, Secretary Gates proposes that the compromise be abandoned, accepting the inclusion of openly-gay leaders. His argument is entirely based on the self-preservation of the B.S.A. as a national organization. He made no moral argument at all. He did not celebrate the new policy he proposed on moral grounds, nor did he lament the loss of the older policy on moral grounds. There were no moral elements in his argument.

Tellingly, Gates referred to internal pressures from scouting organizations in several states that were openly defying the national ban on gay adult leaders, and he also made reference to the threat of lawsuits that, in his words, would threaten to “forbid any kind of membership standard, including our foundational belief in duty to God and our focus on serving the specific needs of boys.”

What Gates did not mention was the fact that the inclusion of openly gay leaders and scouts, along with the challenge that already comes from the feminism and and transgender advocates, makes the very existence of the Boy Scouts ever more vulnerable.

The inescapable fact is that America is becoming a society in which the very idea of the Boy Scouts is increasingly implausible. The current leadership of the B.S.A. would supposedly save the Boy Scouts as an organization, but leave scouting in yet another unsustainable compromise.

That was made clear when Gates argued that the religious organizations that sponsor local units should remain free to establish their own criteria for adult leaders “consistent with their faith.” But Gates surely knows that this assurance is a very thin promise. Perhaps Gates hopes that the lawsuits will now be directed against churches, instead of against the Boy Scouts of America.

The moral disaster of the Gates proposal is matched by a legal and political disaster. Writing at The Washington Post, Sarah Kaplan and Michael E. Miller called the move by Gates “an astute capitulation,” but they also recognized the predicament Gates had made deepened:

“That’s because the Boy Scouts are now in a position where politically they can do no right. Besieged by the left for decades for not allowing gay scouts or leaders, the Boy Scouts are now being attacked from the right. By allowing gay scouts two years ago and now considering allowing gay leaders as well, a deeply traditional organization is trying to stay attuned to the times. But it also risks alienating many core members, for whom the Boy Scouts have long been a bedrock of conservative American life.”

Writing at National Review, Kevin D. Williamson nailed Gates for failing to make a moral argument, when the issue, regardless of the side one takes, is inescapably moral:

“Instead, he argues from organizational self-interest — never mind if it is right or wrong, the policy puts Scouting Inc. in a tough position, so best to abandon it. Duty to God and country? . . . Depending on your point of view, Gates is either doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason or doing the right thing for the wrong reason. ”

As Williamson argues, those who are committed to both sides of the argument over homosexuality are making a moral argument — and Gates is not. To the defenders of the Scout’s longstanding policy, Gates’s proposal is “understood as simple moral cowardice.” On the other hand, those who Williamson describes as taking “the more contemporary view of homosexuality” will see Gates’s position as “arguably even more distasteful.” In the end, “As a moral rationale, ‘the end of us as a national movement’ fails, and fails pitifully, regardless of one’s views on homosexuality.”

So true, and so sad. As a former Boy Scout, I lament the inevitable loss of scouting, knowing full well how much good the scouting movement has done in the lives of countless boys and men. Secretary Gates has signaled his determination to preserve the Boy Scouts of America “as a national movement.” Again, he told the scouting leaders, “we must deal with the world as it is, not as we might want it to be.”

Of course, he never even said how he wanted it to be. That would have required a moral argument. The most unforgivable truth about Gates’s proposal for the Boy Scouts is that it was presented with no moral argument at all. Nevertheless, the eventual requiem for the Boy Scouts will reveal a moral lesson to be sure. But it will be a lesson learned too late, and at so great a loss.

I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/albertmohler.

]]>http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/05/27/a-requiem-for-the-boy-scouts/feed/0Albert MohlerThe Boy Scouts were doomed the moment the national leadership decided to preserve the organization at the cost of the values and ideals that gave it birth. Speaking to a national meeting of Boy Scouts of America leaders, President Robert Gates, former Secretary of Defense and former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, called for […]Blog,The Gathering Storm: The Eclipse of Religious Liberty and the Threat of a New Dark Agehttp://www.albertmohler.com/2015/05/18/the-gathering-storm-the-eclipse-of-religious-liberty-and-the-threat-of-a-new-dark-age/
http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/05/18/the-gathering-storm-the-eclipse-of-religious-liberty-and-the-threat-of-a-new-dark-age/#commentsMon, 18 May 2015 04:02:39 +0000/?p=34822Remarks Delivered Friday, May 15, 2015:

Mister Attorney General, Mr. Sears, and distinguished guests, it is a great honor to accept the Edwin Meese III Award for Originalism and Religious Liberty. That honor is greatly magnified by the presence of Attorney General Meese and by the fact that this award bears his name. He is one of America’s most courageous defenders of human freedom and the American experiment in ordered liberty.

I am also honored to receive this award from the Alliance Defending Freedom and its President, Alan Sears. I have known Alan for many years, and I know him to be one of the most powerful advocates of virtue and liberty of our age. The work of the Alliance Defending Freedom is essential, singular, and urgently vital. This battalion of defenders fights most of all—and most effectively—for our “first freedom,” religious liberty.

I am deeply, and always aware that I could not be here without the constant support and love of my wife, Mary Mohler.

You will recognize that I borrowed from Sir Winston Churchill for the title of my remarks. In the first volume of his history of World War II, the great statesman looked back at the storm clouds that gathered in the 1930s, when he had bravely warned of a war that would determine the destiny of human dignity and liberty for untold millions of people.

We are not facing the same gathering storm, but we are now facing a battle that will determine the destiny of priceless freedoms and the very foundation of human rights and human dignity.

Speaking thirty years ago, Attorney General Meese warned that “there are ideas which have gained influence in some parts of our society, particularly in some important and sophisticated areas that are opposed to religious freedom and freedom in general. In some areas there are some people that have espoused a hostility to religion that must be recognized for what it is, and expressly countered.”

Those were prophetic words, prescient in their clarity and foresight. The ideas of which Mr. Meese warned have only gained ground in the last thirty years, and now with astounding velocity. A revolution in morality now seeks not only to subvert marriage, but also to redefine it, and thus to undermine an essential foundation of human dignity, flourishing, and freedom.

Religious liberty is under direct threat. Just days ago the Solicitor General of the United States served notice before the Supreme Court that the liberties of religious institutions will be an open and unavoidable question. Already, religious liberty is threatened by a new moral regime that exalts erotic liberty and personal autonomy and openly argues that religious liberties must give way to the new morality, its redefinition of marriage, and its demand for coercive moral, cultural, and legal sovereignty.

A new moral and legal order is ascendant in America, and this new order is only possible, in the arena of American law and jurisprudence, if the original intent and the very words of the Constitution of the United States are twisted beyond recognition.

These are days that will require courage, conviction, and clarity of vision. We are in a fight for the most basic liberties God has given humanity, every single one of us, made in his image. Religious liberty is being redefined as mere freedom of worship, but it will not long survive if it is reduced to a private sphere with no public voice. The very freedom to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ is at stake, and thus so is the liberty of every American. Human rights and human dignity are temporary abstractions if they are severed from their reality as gifts of the Creator. The eclipse of Christian truth will lead inevitably to a tragic loss of human dignity. If we lose religious liberty, all other liberties will be lost, one by one. I am a Christian, and I believe that salvation is found in no other name than Jesus Christ and in no other gospel, but I will fight for the religious liberty of all.

There is a gathering storm, and its threat is urgent and real, but there are arguments to be made, principles to be defended, rights to be respected, truths to be cherished, and permanent things to be preserved. We face the danger of a new Dark Age marked by the loss of liberty and the denial of human dignity. Thus, there is a battle to be joined and much work to be done. Together, may we be found faithful to these tasks. As Churchill would remind us, in every gathering storm there is a summons to action.

Remarks by R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, upon receiving the 2015 Edwin Meese III Award for Originalism and Religious Liberty from the Alliance Defending Freedom, Friday, May 15, 2015 in McLean, Virginia.

]]>http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/05/18/the-gathering-storm-the-eclipse-of-religious-liberty-and-the-threat-of-a-new-dark-age/feed/0Albert MohlerRemarks Delivered Friday, May 15, 2015: Mister Attorney General, Mr. Sears, and distinguished guests, it is a great honor to accept the Edwin Meese III Award for Originalism and Religious Liberty. That honor is greatly magnified by the presence of Attorney General Meese and by the fact that this award bears his name. He is […]Blog,Children of the Dayhttp://www.albertmohler.com/2015/05/14/children-of-the-day/
http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/05/14/children-of-the-day/#commentsThu, 14 May 2015 04:22:34 +0000/?p=34798“Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.” [1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 ESV]

To affirm the church is to affirm the Trinity. The church is a sign of the redemptive reciprocity of the Father and the Son, as the Father gives a redeemed people to the Son and as the Son will one day present the church without spot or blemish to the Father. The church exists by the power of the Holy Spirit and in the power of the Holy Spirit. These facts and these facts alone explain why the church has come to be, why the church has survived to this day, and why the church will be preserved throughout eternity to the glory of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

To affirm the church is to affirm the gospel of Jesus Christ, for without that gospel there would be no good news, no message of salvation, no redemption of sinners, and thus no redeemed people of God. Every true church is a gospel church and without the gospel there is no church. The church has received from Christ the commission to make the gospel known to all people, everywhere, with the confidence that whoever hears the gospel and believes will be saved.

To affirm the church is to affirm the authority of the Holy Scriptures as the Word of God. As Martin Luther rightly noted, the church is where the Word of God is rightly preached. Where the Word is not rightly preached, there is no church, plain and simple. Where the church is found, the Word of God is honored, preached, taught, cherished, obeyed, and believed.

To affirm the church is to affirm the ministry. God has given ministers to his church in order that the redeemed people of God may be fed, taught, counseled, instructed, edified, encouraged, corrected, and led. The Christian ministry was not an organizational invention of the early church, but the gift of God. The New Testament reveals that God calls ministers for his church and gifts them according to his call.

As Charles Bridges put the matter perfectly, “The Great Head of the Church has ordained three grand repositories of his truth. In the Scriptures he has preserved it by his Providence against all hostile attacks. In the hearts of Christians he has maintained it by the Almighty energy of his Spirit—even under every outward token of general apostasy. And in the Christian Ministry he has deposited ‘the treasure in earthen vessels’ for the edification and enriching of the Church in successive ages.”

With a vast array of graduating ministers before our eyes, I want to amplify this affirmation of the church and the special calling of its ministers by turning to 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11. This great text points us to the coming Day of the Lord — that great day of God’s perfect judgment that was known already in the Old Testament and is further explained in the New Testament. Today, I want to look from this text to three great truths that will frame the calling, the ministry, and the future faithfulness of Christ’s church, and, especially, of these who will serve as pastors, missionaries, church planters, and other workers in God’s vineyard.

Identity

The first of these great truths is identity. Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are identified in this text as children of light, children of the day. We are not, says Paul, children of the night or children of darkness. It is hard to imagine a more basic or primary biblical metaphor than the contrast of light and darkness. In the beginning, God said “Let there be light,” and there was light. Jesus identified himself as the Light of the world, and he also described his disciples as lights in the world. The Psalmist declared, “The Lord is my light, and my salvation” [Psalm 27:1].

The Word of God is a light unto our paths. The promise of the Messiah was to a people who dwelled in deep darkness. On them would shine a great light. To be saved by the power of Christ is to be “called out of darkness into his marvelous light” [1 Peter 2:9] and to be delivered from the “domain of darkness” and transferred “to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” [Colossians 1:13] God is light, and in him is no darkness at all [1 John 1:5].

In this text, Christians are described as “children of light, children of the day.” The contrast of the children of light and day with the children of darkness and night is as clear as any we might imagine. We are children of light, children of the day, precisely because in Christ we are safe on that great Day of the Lord. We are his, and he is ours. We are children of light because he is the Light of the world, and we remain in the world as lights for his glory — children of the day.

Much is expected of the children of the day. We are to be sober, ready, alert, aware, and, most of all, awake. Sloth and complacency and drunkenness mark the children of the night, the children of darkness. In this sense, we are not to sleep, at least not as others do.

The Christian minister, above all, must be awake and sober minded and serious — alert to the imperatives of gospel ministry and the needs of Christ’s people. Those who teach will be held to a stricter judgment, reminds the Apostle James. The children of the day must be served by ministers of the light, who are faithful undershepherds of the flock of God.

The calling of the Christian ministry is a call that comes to a child of the day to serve the children of the day. We cannot call ourselves, gift ourselves, transform ourselves, or even keep ourselves. But we are children of the day by God’s grace and for God’s glory, and we are called to serve the children of the day by the light of Christ. Our identity is clear — to belong to Christ is to be children of the day, so let us minister as children of the day.

Destiny

Here is the greatest news a human being can ever hear: “For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The children of the day are destined for glory, for salvation, for adoption, and for the eternal redeeming promises of God.

The great dividing line in humanity is not merely between the children of light and the children of darkness, but between those destined for wrath and those destined for salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. Whoever believes in Christ will be saved, and this salvation is not our work, but the gift of God. The entire plan of salvation is the outworking of the eternal purposes of God, as Paul described in Romans 8:28-30: “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”

We are told in no uncertain terms that the only alternative to our destiny of salvation through Christ is to be destined for wrath. This should lead to the unceasing gratitude of the church throughout eternity, but it must also lead to the most eager preaching, teaching, and taking of the gospel to the nations and to all people everywhere.

Ministers of Christ’s church serve in the knowledge that we are serving those who are destined for salvation in Christ and that Christ’s church is not, thanks be to God, destined for wrath. We minister, knowing that our destiny, and the destiny of all those who are in Christ, is secured by God, and not by ourselves. Thus, nothing the world can do can thwart our ministry in an eternal perspective. The church is safe in the purposes of God, destined for salvation, and thus we preach.

Urgency

Back in my teenage years, a staple of youth ministry was the showing of the film, “A Thief in the Night.” Quite honestly, it remains one of the most sobering messages I have ever heard or seen. And yet, the real message of this text is not less sobering than the film, but much more so. Paul reminds the Thessalonian Christians of what they already know, and show themselves confidently to know, and that is that the day of the Lord, that great day of judgment, will come as a thief in the night.

Look at verses 2-4: “For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief.”

There is a biblical urgency to the Christian ministry. Jesus reminded his disciples with these words: “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work” [John 9:4]. While the world declares peace and security, sudden destruction will come — even like labor pains come upon a woman in childbirth.

The children of the day know the eschatological urgency that comes from knowing that the day of the Lord is coming, that the time is short, and that this age will end. This does not mean that we give ourselves to passivity in the light of Christ’s coming, but rather that we be found deployed and faithful when he comes. If this is true for all the children of the day, it is certainly most consciously true of those who are called as ministers for the children of the day. The times and the seasons cry out the urgency of our calling — most of all, the urgency of the preaching of the gospel.

A commencement day comes with a flood of reflection and the splendor of hope. The Spring 2015 graduating class of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is gathered here in space and time for one great moment. Right before our eyes, they are about to be flung to the four corners of the earth, sent into the churches and into the nations. On this sparkling day and on this historic lawn we see them in their graduating gowns and regalia. We rightly feel that they are ours, but they are not ours to keep.

Graduates, you have no earthly idea how loved you are and how many hopes are invested in you. The hopes and prayers of a host of Christ’s people go before you, with you, and after you. Go serve the children of the day, and minister so that Christ’s glory will be more evident in his church. Take the gospel to the nations and look together with all God’s people to that great marriage supper of the Lamb.

Take your place in line and fulfill your ministry with eyes wide open, knowing your destiny in Christ. Go into the world of darkness as brave children of the day.

This is the commencement address delivered by R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, at the school’s 215th commencement ceremony, Thursday, May 14, 2015. The entire ceremony may be viewed live at www.sbts.edu/live

]]>http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/05/14/children-of-the-day/feed/0Albert Mohler“Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as […]Blog,“Whoever Would Save His Life Will Lose It” — A Charge for Graduateshttp://www.albertmohler.com/2015/05/08/whoever-would-save-his-life-will-lose-it-a-charge-for-graduates/
http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/05/08/whoever-would-save-his-life-will-lose-it-a-charge-for-graduates/#commentsFri, 08 May 2015 04:37:11 +0000/?p=34726And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.For whoever would save his lifewill lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?For what can a man give in return for his soul?For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” Mark 8:34-38 ESV

The things we choose to surround us often define us. We choose to put before our eyes those objects that are meaningful to us, even if they strike others as odd. My library is filled with many objects that visitors find reassuring, no doubt. But other objects might give visitors pause.

There are several large ship models in my library–all but one from the great age of sail. The one exception is a long scale model of Titanic. That beautiful ship is a parable before my eyes. Titanic stands alone as a symbol of human pride and arrogance; the unsinkable ship sinking on the morning of April 15, 1912 with a loss of 1,500 lives. This very weekend marks the one hundredth anniversary of the sinking of another great ship, the Lusitania, torpedoed by a German U-boat on May 7, 1915, with a loss of almost 1,200 lives, including an unprecedented number of children and infants. Titanic struck an infamous iceberg, but the Lusitania was sunk by a ruthless torpedo.

What both ships have in common is the fact that in the first class sections of these liners some of the wealthiest people on the planet went aboard with some of their finest objects — dazzling jewels and even fine art. Those who died took their wealth only as far as the ocean bottom. Some were dancing on the deck just shortly before disaster struck.

All this may seem to be a rather depressing introduction to a charge for graduates of Boyce College. This is a momentous day and a day of genuine joy. Why bring up Titanic and the Lusitania?

Well, because Jesus did. Not exactly, of course. But in Mark 8:34-38 we read our Lord’s warning that those who would save their life will lose it. Those who look for full satisfaction in this life will never gain it. Those who demand their best life now will forfeit life with Christ.

As a matter of fact, what Jesus said was this:

For whoever would save his lifewill lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

In the larger context, Jesus had issued a call to discipleship — “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Jesus is not looking for mere believers, though belief is the first command. Christ has called for those who believe in him to serve him and follow him and obey him — even to take up our own cross as his disciples. The servant, Christ also told us, is not greater than his master.

I was recently looking at a book of commencement speeches. They were mostly unremarkable, but the general tone was that college graduates were told to seize the day and believe in themselves. Well, go seize the day and believe in yourselves. Get a good job and a lot of stuff and smell the roses and develop be happy attitudes. Where does that get you?

Make a fortune and waste it wantonly. Make a name for yourselves and get your name listed at your favorite charity. Bloom where you are planted. What does that gain you?

This really is a great day, and we all feel the promise of it. The promise is genuine. We are marking a major achievement here — one so valuable that people have sacrificed a great deal to make this possible. Professors and teachers have dedicated their lives to this calling — the high calling of Christian scholarship. The graduates before us today have completed major programs of demanding scholarship and have earned the degrees awarded today and the diplomas that will soon hang on walls. Hours upon hours of reading, study, teaching, writing, and learning are represented today by academic gowns and engraved diplomas and honest smiles.

A college degree is no small thing. Today, it is a major dividing line in the economy. The graduates who cross this stage and receive these degrees are not receiving trophies given out without regard to achievement and distinction. Boyce College represents the finest traditions of Christian scholarship, teaching, and learning.

None of these graduates arrives at this moment alone. Parents, grandparents, congregations, and a host of others stand behind the achievement recognized today. But, even if these graduates have not produced themselves, they have produced hard academic labor, and they will cross the stage alone.

Of course, they also mark this day as the object of our prayers and love and expectations. They embody so many of our hopes and we feel their day of commencement as if it were our own.

Graduates, enjoy this day to the fullest, but enjoy it with those who helped bring you to this day. Accept hugs and give hugs as tangible expressions of what cannot be put into words. Look at your fellow graduates and realize that you will never again sit together in this life as you sit together now.

But, this is not just any college, and this cannot be just any charge. This is a school committed to the gospel of Jesus Christ and to the faith once for all delivered to the saints. This is a college founded in the name of Christ in service to the church for which Christ died. This cannot be just any charge, for this is not just any college on just any commencement day.

Jesus called the crowd and his disciples to himself, and then called for them to follow him. The logic of Christian discipleship is unlike any other logic you will ever hear. He who would save his life will lose it, whoever loses his life for the sake of Christ and his gospel will save it. If anyone is ashamed of Christ and of his words in this generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

That is a lot different than bloom where you are planted. Christ has issued a call to put everything on the line for the sake of following him, and to follow him with the logic of discipleship, not the logic of this world. Seen in light of that logic, this day does not look smaller, but larger, precisely because it now appears in the calendar of God’s sovereign purpose.

“For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? For what can a man give in return for his life?”

Those questions can be asked–and answered–only in light of the gospel, only in the light of Christ.

Graduates of Boyce College, follow Christ with all your heart for the length of your days. Lose your life to save it. Take up your cross in the name of the One who died on a cross for you. Use the education you have earned for the glory of God and for the sake of the church and for the furtherance of the gospel. You go with our hopes, with our prayers, in our hearts. Be not ashamed of Christ, and he will be unashamed of you. Live every day in anticipation of the coming of the Son of Man in the glory of his Father and with the holy angels.

As Christ himself has reminded us all — What do you have to lose? For the sake of Christ, count it all gain . . . count it all joy.

A Charge to Graduates delivered by R. Albert Mohler, Jr. to the graduating class of Boyce College, May 8, 2015 in Alumni Chapel at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

A special note: This graduating class includes Christopher Albert Mohler, the first son or daughter of a president of Southern Seminary to graduate from this institution. Mary and I are very proud, and for the first time in our many years here, we gladly stand as parents of a graduate. Congratulations, Christopher.

]]>http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/05/08/whoever-would-save-his-life-will-lose-it-a-charge-for-graduates/feed/0Albert MohlerAnd calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what […]Blog,“It is Going to Be an Issue” — Supreme Court Argument on Same-Sex Marriage Puts Religious Liberty in the Crosshairshttp://www.albertmohler.com/2015/04/29/it-is-going-to-be-an-issue-supreme-court-argument-on-same-sex-marriage-puts-religious-liberty-in-the-crosshairs/
http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/04/29/it-is-going-to-be-an-issue-supreme-court-argument-on-same-sex-marriage-puts-religious-liberty-in-the-crosshairs/#commentsWed, 29 Apr 2015 04:39:19 +0000/?p=34640“It is … it is going to be an issue.” With those words, spoken yesterday before the Supreme Court of the United States, the Solicitor General of the United States announced that religious liberty is directly threatened by the legalization of same-sex marriage. Donald Verrili, representing the Obama Administration as the nation’s highest court considered again the issue of same-sex marriage, was responding to a question from Justice Samuel Alito. His answer confirms with candor the threat we have long seen coming.

Back in 2005, long before the movement to legalize same-sex marriage had gained cultural momentum, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty held a forum on the question of gay marriage and religious freedom. The forum included major legal theorists on both sides of the marriage issue. What united most of the legal experts was the consensus that same-sex marriage would present a clear and present danger to the rights of those who would oppose gay marriage on religious grounds.

Marc D. Stern, then representing the American Jewish Congress, put the matter directly:

“The legalization of same-sex marriage would represent the triumph of an egalitarian-based ethic over a faith-based one, and not just legally. The remaining question is whether champions of tolerance are prepared to tolerate proponents of a different ethical vision. I think the answer will be no.”

That was a prophetic statement, as we can now see. Stern continued:

“Within certain defined areas, opponents of gay rights will be unaffected by an embrace of same-sex marriage. But in others, the impact will be substantial. I am not optimistic that, under current law, much can be done to ameliorate the impact on religious dissenters.”

Keep that in mind as you consider the oral arguments in Obergefell v. Hodges, the same-sex marriage case that sets the stage for the legalization of same-sex marriage in all fifty states — and sets the stage for what may well be, in the United States, the greatest threat to religious liberty of our lifetime.

The first exchange on religious liberty came as Justice Antonin Scalia asked Mary L. Bonauto, lead counsel arguing for same-sex marriage, if clergy would be required to perform same-sex ceremonies. Bonauto insisted that declaring a constitutional right for gay marriage would not require clergy of any faith to perform same-sex ceremonies.

The second exchange was between Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Solicitor General Verrilli, also arguing for same-sex marriage. The Chief Justice asked: “Would a religious school that has married housing be required to afford such housing to same-sex couples?”

The Solicitor General did not say no. Instead, he said that the federal government, at present, does not have a law banning discrimination in such matters on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. As for the states, “that is going to depend on how the States work out the balance between their civil rights laws, whether they decide there’s going to be civil rights enforcement of discrimination based on sexual orientation or not, and how they decide what kinds of accommodations they are going to allow under State law.” He went on to say that “different states could strike different balances.”

Make no mistake. The Solicitor General of the United States just announced that the rights of a religious school to operate on the basis of its own religious faith will survive only as an “accommodation” on a state by state basis, and only until the federal government passes its own legislation, with whatever “accommodation” might be included in that law. Note also that the President he represented in court has called for the very legislation Verrilli said does not exist … for now.

Verrilli’s answer puts the nation’s religious institutions, including Christian colleges, schools, and seminaries, on notice. The Chief Justice asked the unavoidable question when he asked specifically about campus housing. If a school cannot define its housing policies on the basis of its religious beliefs, then it is denied the ability to operate on the basis of those beliefs. The “big three” issues for religious schools are the freedoms to maintain admission, hiring, and student services on the basis of religious conviction. By asking about student housing, the Chief Justice asked one of the most practical questions involved in student services. The same principles would apply to the admission of students and the hiring of faculty. All three are now directly threatened. The Solicitor General admitted that these liberties will be “accommodated” or not depending on how states define their laws. And the laws of the states would lose relevance the moment the federal government adopts its own law.

The third exchange on religious liberty came as Justice Samuel Alito asked Verrilli about the right of religious institutions to maintain tax-exempt status, citing the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the Internal Revenue Service to strip Bob Jones University because of that school’s policy against interracial dating and interracial marriage. That policy of Bob Jones University remains a moral blight to this day, even though the university has since rescinded the policy. Bob Jones University stood virtually alone in this unconscionable policy, but the Court’s decision in that lamentable case also set the stage for Justice Alito’s question — “would the same apply to a university or a college if it opposed same-sex marriage?”

Pay close attention to Solicitor General Verrilli’s response:

“You know, I — I don’t think I can answer that question without knowing more specifics, but it’s certainly going to be an issue. I — I don’t deny that. I don’t deny that, Justice Alito. It is — it is going to be an issue.”

Verrilli’s pauses no doubt indicate that he understood the importance of what he was saying — “It’s going to be an issue.”

It will indeed be an issue, and now we have been told so by none other than the Solicitor General of the United States. The loss of tax-exempt status would put countless churches and religious institutions out of business, simply because the burden of property taxes and loss of charitable support would cripple their ability to sustain their mission.

The crippling effects of a loss of tax-exempt status was acknowledged at the Becket Fund event by Jonathan Turley of the George Washington University Law School. “The debate over same-sex marriage,” he explained, “has become for the twenty-first century what the abortion debate was for the twentieth century: a single, defining issue that divides the country in a zero-sum political battle.”

Consider his words:

“Many organizations attract members with their commitment to certain fundamental matters of faith or morals, including a rejection of same-sex marriage or homosexuality. It is rather artificial to tell such groups that they can condemn homosexuality as long as they are willing to hire homosexuals as a part of that mission. It is equally disingenuous to suggest that denial of such things as tax exemption does not constitute a content-based punishment for religious views.”

Those words were spoken back in 2005. The words of Solicitor General Verrilli were spoken yesterday before the Supreme Court of the United States. You can draw a direct line across those years from Professor Turley’s acknowledgment and Mr. Verrilli’s confirmation of the threat — “It’s going to be an issue.”

As the Supreme Court considers the issue of same-sex marriage, and with cultural momentum building for same-sex marriage at warp speed, Marc Stern’s comments also demand our attention. He is undoubtedly right that the victory of same-sex marriage means the victory of an “egalitarian-based ethic over a faith-based one.”

The remaining question, he said then, “whether champions of tolerance are prepared to tolerate proponents of a different ethical vision.” Even then, he warned: “I think the answer will be no.”

We will soon find out just how tolerant those who preached tolerance for same-sex marriage will turn out to be, now that they are ascendant in the culture. Meanwhile, even as we were repeatedly told that warnings about threats to religious liberty were overblown, the truth came out before the Supreme Court yesterday. Take the Solicitor General at his word. “It’s going to be an issue.”

I am always glad to hear from readers. Just write me at mail@albertmohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/albertmohler.

A official transcript of oral arguments in Obergefell v. Hodges, argued before the Supreme Court of the United States on Tuesday, April 28, 2015, can be found here. http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/14-556q1_7l48.pdf

]]>http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/04/29/it-is-going-to-be-an-issue-supreme-court-argument-on-same-sex-marriage-puts-religious-liberty-in-the-crosshairs/feed/0Albert Mohler“It is … it is going to be an issue.” With those words, spoken yesterday before the Supreme Court of the United States, the Solicitor General of the United States announced that religious liberty is directly threatened by the legalization of same-sex marriage. Donald Verrili, representing the Obama Administration as the nation’s highest court considered […]Blog,In Defense of Marriage, the Rule of Law, and Ordered Libertyhttp://www.albertmohler.com/2015/04/28/in-defense-of-marriage-the-rule-of-law-and-ordered-liberty/
http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/04/28/in-defense-of-marriage-the-rule-of-law-and-ordered-liberty/#commentsTue, 28 Apr 2015 09:00:53 +0000/?p=34613Today, the Supreme Court of the United States will hear oral arguments in the case known as Obergefell v. Hodges. The decision in this case will eventually determine the legal definition of marriage in the fifty states. Few issues loom so large over the nation’s future. Christians should pray for the nine justices of the Supreme Court today, aware of the magnitude of the issues before the Court. Love of neighbor also means that we pray that marriage be honored as the union of a man and a woman. Given the question before the Court, readers will find below an updated essay on the appellate court decision that set the stage for the main case to be heard today.

Some arguments just have to be made, and made well. In the case of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, the moment for such an argument arrived late in 2014 when that court had to rule on appeals over the question of same-sex marriage coming from the four states in its federal jurisdiction, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. In each case, Federal District Courts had struck down measures banning same-sex marriage. The question then loomed before the three judge panel of the Sixth Circuit. That court’s decision set the stage for the oral arguments that will take place at the Supreme Court of the United States today.

Until the Sixth Circuit’s decision, no federal appeals court had ruled against same-sex marriage in the aftermath of the U. S. Supreme Court’s 2013 Windsor decision striking down the federal government’s Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA]. That changed when the panel of the Sixth Circuit, in a 2-1 decision, affirmed the measure limiting marriage to one man and one woman in the four covered states. The decision sent shock waves throughout the nation.

The panel had indicated its impatience with arguments put forth by proponents of same-sex marriage when the case was heard months ago, but the decision came even after the Supreme Court on October 6 had refused to accept an appeal from states that had seen their defense of natural marriage go down to court challenges. The nation was watching for the decision from the Sixth Circuit, and when the decision came down at the end of last week, the ruling instantly became headline news.

But, important as the decision was in itself, the larger event was the opinion released for the majority by Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton. Judge Sutton is known for his eloquent prose and forceful argumentation. The opinion was a blockbuster in terms of forceful argument. Judge Sutton’s opinion is a triumph of constitutional argument and the defense of common sense. It is a masterpiece of logic and a compelling argument for the rule of law.

Even though Judge Sutton knew that the U S. Supreme Court appears to be determined to legalize same-sex marriage, his responsibility, with the other judges on the panel, was to decide the cases in light of the U S. Constitution and the rule of law. Once the decision was made, it was Judge Sutton’s responsibility to write the opinion, and he did.

He began by noting the speed of the moral revolution that has produced same-sex marriage in many U S. states, mostly by judicial action. “From the vantage point of 2014,” he wrote, “it would now seem, the question is not whether American law will allow gay couples to marry; it is when and how that will happen. That would not have seemed likely as recently as a dozen years ago.”

He continued: “For better, for worse, or for more of the same, marriage has long been a social institution defined by relationships between men and women. So long defined, the tradition is measured in millennia, not centuries or decades. So widely shared, the tradition until recently had been adopted by all governments and major religions of the world.”

The first major argument presented by Judge Sutton had to do with the fact that the issue is now being decided in the courts. He clearly rejected the idea that a handful of judges should “make such a vital policy call for the thirty-two million citizens” who reside within the Sixth Circuit. That is a rare and refreshing statement of judicial humility. Furthermore, Judge Sutton cited the decision of the Supreme Court in 1972 to refuse to take a case about same-sex marriage from Minnesota, stating that the issue did not raise “a substantial federal question.” The Supreme Court may revisit that judgment, Judge Sutton noted, but it has not. Until then, he advised, lower courts are to be confined by that decision.

Windsor, Judge Sutton argued, did not address that decision [Baker v. Nelson], and thus the judgment of the Court stands. As he noted, this has not prevented other federal courts from ignoring the precedent. Some of those other courts cited “doctrinal developments” in making their decisions to strike down state provisions limiting marriage to a man and a woman, but Judge Sutton advised that such a reading of “doctrinal developments” apart from a clear Supreme Court ruling would be “a groundbreaking development on its own.”

In making his second major point, Judge Sutton argued that the original intention of the framers of the Constitution’s language would support the claim that the states have the right to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. “Nobody in this case,” he argued, “argues that the people who adopted the Fourteenth Amendment understood it to require the States to change the definition of marriage.”

Furthermore, he argued, the Supreme Court ruled just last year by making the same logical argument. In the case Town of Greece v Galloway, the Supreme Court held that Greece, New York was acting within constitutional bounds when it began its town council meetings with prayer. The Court ruled that the framers of the Constitution would not have understood themselves to violate the Constitution when they opened their own sessions with prayer, as both the House of Representatives and the Senate do even today. Similarly, Judge Sutton ruled that the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment clearly did not see that language as requiring states to legalize same-sex marriage.

Then came the third argument presented by Judge Sutton — and it is cased within one of the most important sentences written by any judge in recent times: “A dose of humility makes us hesitant to condemn as unconstitutionally irrational a view of marriage shared not long ago by every society in the world, shared by most, if not all, of our ancestors, and shared still today by a significant number of the States.”

That is a stunning sentence . . . stunning in the larger sense simply because it is so breathtakingly clear and honest.

In his fourth argument, Judge Sutton argued that the biological basis of natural marriage, based in the complementarian nature of the male-female union, is a natural and lawful concern of the state. The state is within its proper domain in defining and limiting marriage to the uniquely procreative union of a man and a woman. A society has the right, he stated, to establish ground rules for marriage “and most especially a need to create stable family units for the planned and unplanned creation of children.”

Then came this strategic paragraph:

“What we are left with is this: By creating a status (marriage) and by subsidizing it (e.g. with tax-filing privileges and deductions), the States created an incentive for two people who procreate together to stay together for purposes of rearing offspring. This does not convict the States of irrationality, only of awareness of the biological reality that couples of the same sex do not have children in the same way as couples of opposite sexes and that couples of the same sex do not run the risk of unintended offspring. This explanation, still relevant today, suffices to allow the States to retain authority over an issue they have regulated from the beginning.”

In his fifth argument, Judge Sutton asked why marriage is still to be defined in terms of monogamy. “If it is constitutionally irrational to stand by the man-woman definition of marriage, it must be constitutionally irrational to stand by the monogamous definition of marriage,” he stated. He also recorded that in the oral arguments the attorneys arguing for same-sex marriage had been unable to answer his question. They could not, he stated, because the only argument they could advance was moral tradition. They could not cite moral tradition as the authority for monogamy because they argued that moral tradition was not a rational basis for law when it came to limiting marriage to a man-woman union. Judge Sutton also noted that the Supreme Court has not defined any “fundamental right” for same-sex couples to marry.

Finally, Judge Sutton delivered a major blow for legal sanity when he directly addressed the argument that judges should interpret the Constitution as a “living” document, recognizing the evolution of moral judgment in the larger society. As Judge Sutton argued, and argued eloquently, if society is really evolving on this issue (as he conceded that it is), then the advocates of same-sex marriage should allow the democratic process to work. If morality is really evolving, then the matter will be settled democratically on the basis of the new morality. The only justification for going to the courts to deal with the issue is a lack of confidence that the society is actually evolving on the question. Furthermore, Judge Sutton argued, the “living constitution” arguments really rest on the evolving judgments of judges, not of the people. “The theory of the living constitution,” he asserted, “rests on the premise that every generation has the right to govern itself. If that premise prevents judges from insisting on principles that society has moved past, so too should it prevent judges from anticipating principles that society has yet to embrace.”

Once again, a refreshing statement of judicial candor and humble clarification.

Then, Judge Sutton offered an even more powerful assertion: “If, before a new consensus has emerged on a social issue, federal judges may decide when the time is ripe to recognize a new constitutional right, surely the people should receive some deference in deciding when the time is ripe to move from one picture of marriage to another.”

The ruling by the panel of the Sixth Circuit set the stage for the arrival of the issue once again at the United States Supreme Court As Judge Sutton indicated in the opening section to his opinion, he fully expected the Supreme Court to rule in favor of same-sex marriage. In his opinion, he made clear that this would be a mistake and a violation of the Court’s own logic. More importantly, Judge Sutton made clear that he believes that any straightforward reading of the Constitution in terms of its original meaning would allow the states to regulate marriage and to protect natural marriage as the central organizing principle of human society.

Judges who have ruled against state measures limiting marriage to a man and a woman have acted recklessly, as Judge Sutton’s powerful opinion demonstrates, imperiling both the rule of law and the institution of marriage.

These judges, Judge Sutton reveals, have substituted their own moral judgment for the rule of law. Some years ago, the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall told a group of his clerks that this was precisely his legal philosophy. “You do what you think is right and let the law catch up,” Justice Marshall advised.

That is not a statement that honors the rule of law. It is a statement of judicial imposition. Judge Sutton’s opinion represents a very different philosophy of law, and one that will stand the test of time, even if it does not stand the test of appeal.

Sometimes the right argument just has to be made, even if it does not win at any given hour. The truth will stand the test of time, and Judge Sutton deserves our gratitude and respect for making an argument in defense of both marriage and the Constitution — and for making it so well.

I am always glad to hear from readers. Just write me at mail@albertmohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/albertmohlerDecision and Opinion: The United States Court of Appeal for the Sixth Circuit,April DeBoer, et al v. Richard Snyder, et al. Originating Case No. : 2:12-cv-10285 Link: http://sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/6th-CA-marriage-ruling-11-6-14.pdfQuotation from Justice Thurgood Marshall, see Deborah L. Rhode, “Letting the Law Catch Up,” Stanford Law Review, vol. 44, (Summer 1992), pp. 1259-1265. Link (restricted access): http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1229058uid=12583072&uid=3739680&uid=2&uid=3&uid=67&uid=62&uid=12582936&uid=3739256&sid=21105167033933
]]>http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/04/28/in-defense-of-marriage-the-rule-of-law-and-ordered-liberty/feed/0Albert MohlerToday, the Supreme Court of the United States will hear oral arguments in the case known as Obergefell v. Hodges. The decision in this case will eventually determine the legal definition of marriage in the fifty states. Few issues loom so large over the nation’s future. Christians should pray for the nine justices of the […]Blog,Same-Sex Marriage,Supreme CourtThis is How Religious Liberty Dies — The New Rules of the Secular Lefthttp://www.albertmohler.com/2015/04/07/this-is-how-religious-liberty-dies-the-new-rules-of-the-secular-left/
http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/04/07/this-is-how-religious-liberty-dies-the-new-rules-of-the-secular-left/#commentsTue, 07 Apr 2015 05:21:59 +0000/?p=34451The vast high-velocity moral revolution that is reshaping modern cultures at warp speed is leaving almost no aspect of the culture untouched and untransformed. The advocates of same-sex marriage and the more comprehensive goals of the LGBT movement assured the nation that nothing would be fundamentally changed if people of the same gender were allowed to marry one another. We knew that could not be true, and now the entire nation knows.

The latest Ground Zero for the moral revolution is the state of Indiana, where legislators passed a state version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which Gov. Mike Pence then signed into law. The controversy that followed was a free-for-all of misrepresentation and political posturing. Within days, the governor capitulated to the controversy by calling for a revision of the law — a revision that may well make the RFRA a force for weakening religious liberty in Indiana, rather than for strengthening it.

Business, political, and civic leaders piled on in a mass act of political posturing. The federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act became law in 1993 in a mass act of bipartisan cooperation. The Act passed unanimously in the House of Representatives and with 97 affirmative votes in the Senate. President Bill Clinton signed the bill into law, celebrating the Act as a much needed protection of religious liberty. Clinton called religious liberty the nation’s “first freedom” and went on to state: “We believe strongly that we can never, we can never be too vigilant in this work.”

But, that was then. Indiana is now.

Hillary Clinton, ready to launch her campaign for President, condemned the law as dangerous and discriminatory — even though the law in its federal form has not led to any such discrimination. Apple CEO Tim Cook took to the pages of The Washington Post to declare that the Indiana law “would allow people to discriminate against their neighbors.” For its part, The Washington Post published an editorial in which the paper’s editorial board condemned a proposed RFRA in the state of Georgia because the law would prevent the state government “from infringing on an individual’s religious beliefs unless the state can demonstrate a compelling interest in doing so.”

So, The Washington Post believes that a state should be able to infringe on a citizen’s religious liberty without a compelling interest? That is the only conclusion a reader can draw from the editorial.

The piling on continued when the governor of Connecticut, Dannel Mulloy announced that he would even forbid travel to Indiana by state officials, conveniently forgetting to mention that his own state has a similar law, as does the federal government. The NCAA piled on, as did a host of sports figures from across the country. More than one pundit pointed to the irony of the NCAA trying to posture on a question of sexual morality, but the pile-on continued.

Law professor Daniel O. Conkle of Indiana University stated the truth plainly when he said: “The reaction to this law is startling in terms of its breadth–and to my mind–the extent to which the reaction is uninformed by the actual content of the law.” Similarly, University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock, a proponent of gay marriage, stated: “The hysteria over this law is so unjustified.” He continued: “It’s not about discriminating against gays in general or across the board . . . it’s about not being involved in a ceremony that you believe is inherently religious.”

Nevertheless, the real issue here is not the RFRA in Indiana, or Arkansas, or another state. The real issue is the fact that the secular Left has decided that religious liberty must now be reduced, redefined or relegated to a back seat in the culture.

The evidence for this massive and dangerous shift is mounting.

One key indicator is found in the editorial pages of The New York Times. That influential paper has appointed itself the guardian of civil liberties, and it has championed LGBT causes for decades now. But the paper’s editorial board condemned the Indiana law as “cover for bigotry.” The most chilling statement in the editorial, however, was this:

“The freedom to exercise one’s religion is not under assault in Indiana, or anywhere else in the country. Religious people — including Christians, who continue to make up the majority of Americans — may worship however they wish and say whatever they like.”

There you see religious liberty cut down to freedom of worship. The freedom to worship is most surely part of what religious liberty protects, but religious liberty is not limited to what happens in a church, temple, mosque, or synagogue.

But the clearest evidence of the eagerness of the secular Left to reduce and redefine religious liberty comes in the form of two columns by opinion writer Frank Bruni. The first, published in January, included Bruni’s assurance that he affirmed “the right of people to believe what they do and say what they wish — in their pews, homes, and hearts.” Religious liberty is now redefined so that it has no place outside pews, homes, and hearts. Religious liberty no longer has any public significance.

But Bruni does not really affirm religious liberty, even in churches and in the hiring of ministers. He wrote: “And churches have been allowed to adopt broad, questionable interpretations of a ‘ministerial exception’ laws that allow them to hire and fire clergy as they wish.”

The ability of churches to hire and fire ministers as they wish is “questionable.” Remember that line when you are told that your church is promised “freedom of worship.”

But Bruni’s January column was merely a prelude to what came in the aftermath of the Indiana controversy. Now, the openly-gay columnist demands that Christianity reform its doctrines as well.

He opened his column in the paper’s edition published Easter Sunday with this:

“The drama in Indiana last week and the larger debate over so-called religious freedom laws in other states portray homosexuality and devout Christianity as forces in fierce collision. They’re not — at least not in several prominent denominations, which have come to a new understanding of what the Bible does and doesn’t decree, of what people can and cannot divine in regard to God’s will.”

Bruni issued an open demand that evangelical Christians to get over believing that homosexuality is a sin, or suffer the consequences. His language could not be more chilling:

“So our debate about religious liberty should include a conversation about freeing religions and religious people from prejudices that they needn’t cling to and can jettison, much as they’ve jettisoned other aspects of their faith’s history, rightly bowing to the enlightenments of modernity.”

There you have it — a demand that religious liberty be debated (much less respected) only if conservative believers will get with the program and, mark his language, bow to the demands of the modern age.

Christianity and homosexuality “don’t have to be in conflict in any church anywhere,” Bruni declared.

He reduced religious conviction to a matter of choice:

“But in the end, the continued view of gays, lesbians and bisexuals as sinners is a decision. It’s a choice. It prioritizes scattered passages of ancient texts over all that has been learned since — as if time had stood still, as if the advances of science and knowledge meant nothing. It disregards the degree to which all writings reflect the biases and blind spots of their authors, cultures and eras.”

So the only religion Bruni respects is one that capitulates to the modern age and is found “rightly bowing to the enlightenments of modernity.”

That means giving up the inerrancy of Scripture, for one thing. The Bible, according to Bruni, reflects the biases and blind spots of the human authors and their times. When it comes to homosexuality, he insists, we now know better.

This is the anthem of liberal Protestantism, and the so-called mainline Protestant churches have been devoted to this project for the better part of a century now. Bruni applauds the liberal churches for getting with the program and for revising the faith in light of the demands of the modern age — demands that started with the denial of truths such as the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection of Christ, miracles, the verbal inspiration of Scripture, and other vital doctrines. The liberal churches capitulated on the sexuality issues only after capitulating on a host of central Christian doctrines. Almost nothing is left for them to deny or reformulate.

It is interesting to see how quickly some can get with the program and earn the respect of the secular gatekeepers. Bruni cites David Gushee of Mercer University as an example of one who has seen the light. “Human understanding of what is sinful has changed over time,” Bruni quotes Gushee. Bruni then stated that Gushee “openly challenges his faith’s censure of same-sex relationships, to which he no longer subscribes.”

But David Gushee agreed with the church’s historic condemnation of same-sex relationships, even in a major work on Christian ethics he co-authored, until he released a book stating otherwise just months ago. Once a public figure gets with the program, whether that person is David Gushee or Barack Obama, all is quickly forgiven.

Bruni also notes that “Christians have moved far beyond Scripture when it comes to gender roles.” He is right to understand that some Christians have indeed done so, and in so doing they have made it very difficult to stop with redefining the Bible on gender roles. Once that is done, there is every reason to expect that a revisionist reading of sexuality is close behind. Bruni knows this, and celebrates it.

Taken together, Frank Bruni’s two columns represent a full-throttle demand for theological capitulation and a fully developed reduction of religious liberty. In his view, stated now in full public view in the pages of The New York Times, the only faiths that deserve religious liberty are those that bow their knees to the ever most costly demands of the modern age.

It is incredibly revealing that the verb he chose was “bowing.” One of the earliest lessons Christians had to learn was that we cannot simultaneously bow the knee to Caesar and to Christ. We must choose one or the other. Frank Bruni, whether he intended to do so or not, helps us to see that truth with new clarity.

Frank Bruni, “Your God and My Dignity,” The New York Times, Sunday, January 11, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-religious-liberty-bigotry-and-gays.html

]]>http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/04/07/this-is-how-religious-liberty-dies-the-new-rules-of-the-secular-left/feed/0Albert MohlerThe vast high-velocity moral revolution that is reshaping modern cultures at warp speed is leaving almost no aspect of the culture untouched and untransformed. The advocates of same-sex marriage and the more comprehensive goals of the LGBT movement assured the nation that nothing would be fundamentally changed if people of the same gender were allowed […]Blog,